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Monday, November 14, 2016

The investigator formerly known as Prince

These weekly updates I write are very biased, I have realized. I write these emails when I am feeling the best about the mission. It is Monday, p-day, the best day. Everything is nice on p-days so I see the mission through rose colerd glasses. Because right now I feel good about everything, like I don't care that I woke up and found a few cockroaches in my bed, no big deal. But honestly this week has been rough, incredibly hard. I had to deal with a lot of things I never thought would ever happen on a mission, I am not gunna lie. But through all the horrible things that happend there were a few gems that made me feel a little bit better and those gems are what I will share because thats what I want to remember.

The first great thing is another "only in Benin thing". I really like our stake president he is a super spiritual guy and he is really young. He takes a taxi (moto) to the stake center every time he comes and on the way he teaches the driver the gosple and by the time they arrive the stake president finds the missisonaries and we get a new contact from every taxi man he uses. He really wants to run a great stake and he is doing well. That is just so you know the kind of guy he is. So we are at the stake center waiting for the font to fill up for a baptism for Elder Warr and we see the stake president in a t-shirt helping people out cleaning the church and I read his shirt because it is in english it says "It's only binge drinking if you stop" with a beer logo. I know for a fact he has no idea what it means or he wouldn't wear it, but it was just so funny. The Benin is the Deseret Industries/Goodwill of the world. I swear if you ever have just donated your old clothes to one of those stores that takes them or anything like that, it ends up here and it is sold on the side of the street. The other day I bought a towel and I swear it could have been an old one I used to have when I was little that we gave away and I just bought it back. So I am sure that is what happened with the stake presidents shirt a hand-me-down from somone in Iowa.

Another thing was great was brother Prince. what a guy. He is a pretty young guy, maybe my age, I don't know but he was one day contacted in the street by Mukendi and his old companion a really, really long time ago and in the only lesson they had with him he said to Mukendi "you guys need to help me, I love your message and I need your help don't forget about me". But he would never accept another phone call after that and when they saw him in the street he said he had no time and they kind of stoped trying with him. However, Mukendi didn't forget about him and one day he said, "hey I got a feeling about this old ami (investigator), I will never forget about him". So we went and saw him and he is one of the nicest people I ever met, so humble, so kind, wow. We have started having lessons with him and it is like teaching a seminary teacher he like knows everything already and he has never been taught. It is really great. I extended the invatation for baptism in our third lesson and he enthusiastically accepted before I could even finish my memorized invitation. And Prince is why I am still alive this week because knowing that I am here to help that guy get to the waters of baptism and open the gates to so much more is what gets me through all the hard stuff.

Other than that not much else great to talk about. I pray every day that the power and water can stay on for at least most of the day. But the day to day living is not that bad, you adapt, you really do and you find uses for everything like an old missionary journal is what I have been using for toilet paper for a while. I am becoming very innovative with different things. For instance I use the clips I use to dry my clothes as a chip clip for this bag of crackers I bought. It is fun when you break out of functional fixedness. I guess that's all for this week.

Me and "E". He is one of my best buddies. I am really good friends with a lot of the little kids here. Sometimes they will see me out in the sector and run and give me hugs, it is just the best.

This is what the stands look like where I buy all my food.

I am so thankful for washing machines. Hand washing takes hours and hours.